# One Million Neighbors Ep 2: War

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/premium-ad-free-straight-white-american-jesus-4273207/one-million-neighbors-ep-2-war
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/premium-ad-free-straight-white-american-jesus-4273207/one-million-neighbors-ep-2-war.md
Podcast: [Premium Ad-Free: Straight White American Jesus](https://stenobird.com/podcast/premium-ad-free-straight-white-american-jesus-4273207)
Published: 2026-04-02T23:05:00+00:00
Episode link: https://clrtpod.com/m/traffic.megaphone.fm/SWAJ8561020961.mp3
Audio file: https://clrtpod.com/m/traffic.megaphone.fm/SWAJ8561020961.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/premium-ad-free-straight-white-american-jesus-4273207/episodes/one-million-neighbors-ep-2-war
Duration seconds: 2129

## Resource

Episode two of One Million Neighbors brings us to the chaotic final days of Saigon in April 1975, as ten-year-old Simon Hoa-Phan watches his world unravel. From the terror of nighttime bombings to the desperate crush of families fleeing toward evacuation helicopters, Simon’s story captures the fear, uncertainty, and life-altering decisions faced by thousands as South Vietnam fell. His family’s escape—narrow, chaotic, and uncertain—becomes a window into a much larger phenomenon: the mass displacement of millions across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, where war, political upheaval, and U.S. intervention forced entire populations to flee under harrowing conditions. At the same time, across the world in St. Paul, Minnesota, Kathleen Vellenga witnesses these events from a hospital bed and feels a call to act. Her personal turning point reflects a broader movement among American faith communities, who would go on to play a central role in resettling more than a million Southeast Asian refugees. This episode traces the historical roots of that movement—from Cold War politics and moral responsibility to deeply held religious convictions—and introduces the ordinary people who made extraordinary choices to welcome strangers as neighbors. Dr. Melissa Borja is Associate Professor of American Culture and Director of the Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the University of Michigan. Trained at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Columbia, she is a historian of migration, religion, race, and politics and author of Follow the New Way: American Refugee Resettlement Policy and Hmong Religious Change (Harvard University Press), which won the the Thomas Wilson Memorial Prize, the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church History, and the Outstandi…

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## Transcript

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